Category: comedy

A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Written by Blake Edwards and William Peter Blatty
Directed by Blake Edwards

By 1964, British actor Peter Sellers was a well-known name in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world due to his appearance as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in 1963’s The Pink Panther. Previously, Sellers had built a career starting as a member of The Goon Squad on British radio and then as an actor, most prominently in Lolita for Stanley Kubrick. At the start of 1964, audiences were shown Sellers’ full range of abilities in Dr. Strangelove, and at the end of that same year, got A Shot in the Dark. Clouseau was a populist character, a mockery of the police that gave the audience laughs over his pompous buffoonery. That’s the core conceit of the character is that he is an idiot who carries himself with unearned confidence and, when he is proven inept time and time again, persists in his methods. He is the perfect parody of a police officer. Filmmaker Blake Edwards wanted to keep the Clouseau money machine going, so he, along with William Peter Blatty (yes, the author of The Exorcist), adapted a French play about a stupid detective investigating a murder and simply made it Clouseau.

Harvey (1950)
Written by Mary Chase, Oscar Brodney, and Myles Connolly
Directed by Henry Koster

In American media, the dichotomy between smart and kind is often raised. I think it’s important to note what “smart” means in these instances. To be smart in the United States is not to be intelligent. Intellect is an entirely different concept. American smartness is on par with the idea of cunning, being able to outwit others and ensure you are on top of the heap. We can see this in how people with a talent for capitalist exploitation are heralded as brilliant people. They are smart because they find a way to play the game, screw over people not as bright as them, and end up higher on the ladder of power. A smart person in America simply does evil and manages not to get caught. So, when Elwood P. Dowd says, “In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years, I was smart. I recommend pleasant”; it means something more profound.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Written by Dudley Nichols & Hagar Wilde
Directed by Howard Hawks

Where It Happened One Night was a massive box office & critical success for Columbia Pictures; Bringing Up Baby was initially a bomb for RKO Pictures. It was a film explicitly written with Katharine Hepburn in mind and ended up being the culmination of a string of failures in her career at the time. For five years after winning her first Academy Award, the actress struggled to find work that connected with audiences. However, Hepburn would salvage her career three years later with The Philadelphia Story. As for Bringing Up Baby, it would find a new audience in the 1950s and is now revered as one of the great comedies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. 

It Happened One Night (1934)
Written by Robert Riskin
Directed by Frank Capra

No genre in the arts is more subjective than comedy. Initially, comedy was considered performance pieces with a light-hearted tone. So essentially, anything with a happy ending. That has been the case if you look at most theatrical comedies from ancient Greece into our modern era. For example, Dante’s Divine Comedy is named that because it delivers an upbeat ending despite some absolutely horrific Inferno sections. Because these stories often had more relatable moments than the more heightened & sadder tragedies, laughter was commonly heard from the audience. Thus, the connection between comedy & funny became a thing.